Race as Technology in the Dutch Governmental Data Ontology: Introducing Racetechnicity

• In Event: Race and/as Technology - II

Abstract

In this paper, I will argue that systems that appropriate racial or ethnic data, such as the “livability barometer”, an app measuring the livability of neighborhoods in the Netherlands or the predictive policing system of the Dutch Police (CAS), perform an act of racialization. To address the becoming technical of the process of racialization I suggest the concept of ‘racetechnicity’, pointing at (1) the technical origins of race and (2) the collection of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used “in the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group” (Omi and Winant 2015). Engaging with Chun (2009), I will question the possibility of poiesis, or seeing race as “a technique that one uses, even as one is used by it”. Considering that in the Netherlands, racial identity is assigned by the government rather than self-reported, resistance or affirmation is nearly impossible.
By combining a critical data studies approach (Dalton et al. 2016) with a postcolonial STS perspective I will show how racetechnicity works in two directions. First, it shows that racialization is historically, culturally and technologically situated. Being able to pinpoint which elements and relations in data assemblages are responsible for racialization opens up possibilities for democratic resistance. Second, through racetechnicity, the point of view of data assemblages as regimes of truth (Foucault 1980) becomes visible. This enables us to make systems and algorithms accountable and show how they, like the humans that made them, can suffer from “white innocence” (Wekker 2016).

Author

• Gerwin van Schie, Utrecht University